[macalla]

I graduated from Seminary in 2009, so maybe my recent experience will be a helpful insight. I hated the first two years, but the next two years were so pleasant that I spent half of the year after I graduated visiting the class.

The negatives:

* WAYYYYY too early. Getting up at 5 (or 4:30 in my case) is too early for growing bodies that need sleep almost as much as newborns. Additionally, at the school I went to, it was not uncommon to come home with 5hrs worth of homework, which leaves you little time for anything else, and certainly not enough time for sleep. That was very stressful.

* The teachers. Not all seminary teachers are good teachers. My sophomore teacher said “um” 167 times in a single 50 min class period once. She also taught that latin americans received lighter pigmentation in their skin after converting to the gospel.

The positives:

* Doctrinal education. Regardless of personal testimony or lack thereof, it’s helpful to know exactly what the church teaches. During the time I went to Seminary, I developed a sense of responsibility for my own spirituality.

* Socialization with peer group.

* The teachers. Some Seminary teachers are really good. My junior and senior year, I started going to the early bird class (met half hour earlier to accommodate kids in the jazz band). The teacher was awesome. He didn’t follow the lesson manual, and he frequently brought in material from outside sources, like the RLDS Inspired Version of the bible, sacred writings from Japan, scholarly articles, FARMS stuff, Nibley, it was great. We also had Doctrinal Discussion Mondays, where we’d spend the whole 50 min asking tough questions about women and the priesthood, JS and polygamy, the virgin birth, etc. He was very nom-ish.

Of course, your daughter’s individual experience will be completely different than mine was. Maybe she could meet her potential teachers, or look at the Seminary textbooks and decide if it is important to her to learn that way. My parents made Seminary mandatory, but I knew many LDS youth who did not attend. These youth were generally perceived as somewhat astray however.

I feel like I’m rambling now. I hope this helps in some way.

[macalla]

Excellent post! This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

I’ve always been one to explore and make my own mistakes, not taking someone else’s word on something.

When I was two, I liked to touch everything, and one day, my mom saw me touching the burner of the kitchen stove. It wasn’t on. She told me not to touch it. I immediately touched it again. She explained that it got very hot sometimes and could hurt me. I touched it again to prove that I wouldn’t be hurt. I began touching the burner every time my mom was in the same room (out of defiance, I guess), and she would repeatedly tell me not to touch it. After a couple days of this, she turned the burner on at the lowest setting and told me not to touch it. Of course, I touched it. I never did that again. 😯

This trait has stuck with me all my life. There are a few exceptions though. When I see someone else experiencing pain or distress, I learn from observation. I’ve witnessed many friends grieving for departed loved ones, and I know that is not a feeling I ever want to experience so deeply. I see how much it hurts them and I don’t ever want to have to hurt like that. Life happens though, whether we want it to or not.

My boyfriend and I were in a car crash three weeks ago. Last summer in Driver Ed, we were taught by a trauma nurse who had seen some pretty badly mangled crash victims and had to tell many parents that they would never see their children on this earth again. It was obvious to me what an impression these experiences had made on her, and I believed her when she said a car crash was an experience to avoid at all costs. When I left my house three weeks ago, I didn’t intend to have that experience, and would have happily spent my life inside the crash-less box had the fellow not ran a red light. The moment after impact, I looked over at my boyfriend who had been knocked unconscious and thought he was dead. A second later he was awake, screaming in pain, and trying to crawl through the window. That split second was the most horrible moment of my life, and I never want to relive it. Grief was way too close for comfort.

But here’s the thing. As awful as that experience was, I wouldn’t trade the memory of it for anything. If the thought police could come and erase it, I wouldn’t want them to. We both learned a lot about each other and grew a great deal closer from the experience. If somebody had told me before the accident what I would gain from it, I still wouldn’t have wanted to go through with it. But now that I’ve experienced it, I feel as if I’ve earned the memory and lessons from it.

I’m lazy. I’d rather take somebody’s word for it that losing my family will hurt than actually experience it. Unfortunately, it will happen someday. But in cases like the church’s endless rules and various doctrines, I’d rather find out for myself what works/what is true for me. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done.

Unfortunately, taking someone’s word for it is optional only in the latter case.

[macalla]

Hi KimiKiwi,

I was in a similar situation about a year ago. My boyfriend is a non-mormon. I had some pretty disturbing experiences with “good mormon boys” prior to dating my boyfriend, and had actually sworn off men in general until I met him. These boys came from strong LDS families and had goals of temple marriage, but I found that they were secretly perverted creeps, and ended up getting into an abusive stalker relationship that soured me to the whole male race. So for the next year I focused on living “worthy” of Temple marriage and developed a pretty strong TBM testimony.

Then I met my boyfriend. We were friends for some time, and then started dating. Things were wonderful. I was attracted by his genuine goodness. He is a respectful, motivated, honorable young man. He acts out of an internal drive to be good, although he does not follow any religion. He follows mormon standards more closely than any LDS boys I knew, just because he wants to, and I loved this about him (I appreciate it even more now!). I felt that it would be easy to convert him, and we could get married in the Temple and be happy ever after.

My cognitive dissonance came when he brought up marriage. We talked about religion and tradition, and I asked if he would marry me in the temple. He’s very open-minded and said it was something he’s open to down the road, but nothing felt right about the idea. I knew it would be for me, not him. I had shown him For the Strength of Youth some months prior, and constantly felt conflicted about the level of physical intimacy between us. We’re both waiting for marriage, but the passage about “passionate kissing” in that pamphlet created a lot of cognitive dissonance for me. It seems so silly now, but I took it very seriously.

I came to a point of such extreme internal conflict that I felt I would have to leave the relationship if he couldn’t grow his own fire of a testimony and if I couldn’t stop kissing him with any degree of emotion. But the more I thought about breaking up with him, the worse I felt. I began to pray intensely, study the scriptures and words of the prophets, research the gospel, and talk to church leaders. The deeper I got into church doctrine, the more awful I felt. I started questioning some of the things I read that seemed to conflict each other. I tried to live the “perfect” TBM life, and it all crashed around me. None of it made sense.

One clear night, I was sitting outside under the stars praying, agonizing about what to do, and it struck me that God was other, separate from all I had been taught, and all I was assuming. I felt as though He were up there among the stars, saying “I want you to be happy. Don’t worry about all that stuff. I didn’t create you to worry. You’re missing the point.” It was this “answer” to my prayer that led me to find the peace I have now, as ironic as that may be. I felt like a huge weight was off my chest. I discovered what “free agency” really means.

From that point, I began to reevaluate my beliefs, casting off a lot of shtuff that was bogus and just plain silly. My poor boyfriend went through a lot while I was in the middle of my faith crisis, but he didn’t judge me. I learned to do the same, to love him unconditionally for who he is. In the end, although I wanted to change him, I’m happier now that I’ve begun to change. I’ve started on a journey to find my own spiritual path, and he’s been understanding and supportive throughout the whole thing. I’m happier with him than I could ever be with a “good mormon boy.” We can talk about so much more because our hearts and minds are open.

I hope I haven’t rambled too much. The best advice I can give you is to pray, hard. Pay attention for answers, whatever form they may come in. 1) find out what you really believe, apart from what your mother or boyfriend or friends believe. 2) find out what you really want. Why do you want to marry in the temple? What are your goals in life? 3) find out if your boyfriend is the one you can pursue your goals with. Will he support you in your decisions? Will he help you achieve your goals? 4) Do some serious soul searching and decide if you want to support his beliefs, whether or not they match yours, and help him achieve his goals. Can you make that kind of commitment?

These aren’t easy things to think about. The experience I described was one of the hardest of my life. But I can’t begin to describe the peace and satisfaction that comes from knowing yourself and consciously making choices to believe and act a certain way. I wish the best to you on your journey

[macalla]

Beautiful experience! 🙂

That’s very touching that they made allowances for you even with the refreshments! Very Christlike and tolerant/understanding.

I’ve often wondered if this is what it’s like for investigators when they visit a mormon service. We’re so accepting of non-members.

I’ve had similar experiences every time I’ve visited another church, without exception. I suspect part of this is because I’m seeing others’ religions with open eyes and a ready, willing heart. I have no reason to be cynical when the church is not my own. I’m sure my mind is more attune with the Spirit and open to such uplifting experiences when I’m not cynical I wish I could find a way to allow my mind to be open like that in my YSA ward.

I wonder what my experience there would be like if I could show up one day as an investigator, having never heard anything about the LDS church before. What would stand out, what would I relate to, what would I consider strange? I’m confident that it would be different.

[macalla]

I’m hijacking the funny thread

I remember this song we used to sing at Girls’ Camp. It went like this:

Mormon, mormon, mormon, mormon,

Mormon, mormon, mormon, mormon,

I know a Mormon boy

He is my pride and joy

He knows ‘most everything

from Alma on down.

Someday I’ll be his wife

We’ll have eternal life

Oh how I love my Mormon boy!

chant: M-O-R-M-E-N, more men! More men! Sing it again! *repeat ad nauseum*

And this one (sung to the tune of Popcorn Popping from the Children’s Songbook):

I looked out the window and what did I see?

Tall, dark, handsome return missionaries!

Spring had brought me such a nice surprise:

Tall, dark, and handsome right before my eyes!

I could take an armful and kiss all three,

But only one for eternity.

It wasn’t really so, but it seemed to me.

Tall dark handsome return missionaries!

Add that to the Home Evening Lecture Locations. 😯

[macalla]

That’s a great point; I hadn’t even thought of Santa as fitting the bill there. 😯

If that’s the case, it definitely makes more sense. The Stages of Faith are something humanity deals with, not just one religion or another. Even the most irreligious people experience these things, I’m sure. Although for them, without the label of “faith,” it may be a much easier transition. They might never even consciously notice this developmental progression in themselves or those around them. It never would have occurred to me. I always thought people just “grew up.”

How many people still believe in Santa at age 40, only to come to a faith crisis? It’s considered “normal” to grow up and learn he doesn’t exist, and no one will judge a child negatively for coming to that realization. It’s to be expected.

How many people in the church have a faith crisis, maybe make it all the way to Stage 5, without ever openly acknowledging it? Have these people been my teachers/leaders without my knowing? Did they go along with it because they thought there was something wrong with them, they weren’t “normal,” etc.?

If progressing along the Stages of faith is as normal as growing up and discovering there is no Santa, there must be an awful lot of people like us out there who are being told not to grow up :crazy:

I find this whole concept fascinating, and it explains a lot. But at the same time, it’s confusing when I try to apply it to other people 😆

[macalla]

I believe it is totally doable, but think carefully about how your children will be treated. If you attend meetings regularly, church is a large part of their social life. “Fitting in” is a big thing.

I come from a progressive family. Although my parents taught me TBM standards/doctrines/cultural behaviors, they had very unconventional methods of raising us kids. We were home schooled. Vegetarian. Didn’t receive vaccinations. Liberally-indoctrinated. The list goes on. My parents were “scholarly” mormons (read Nibley a lot), and could always find a way to use scriptures and prophet-quotes to support their decisions.

I remember feeling very self-righteous when we learned about the WOW in my primary classes, knowing that I had more information about the intended interpretation than my peers. I pointed out the phrasing about only eating meat sparingly, in times of cold and famine, and explained that everyone else was choosing to ignore the obvious meaning because of unrighteousness and unwillingness to obey (what my parents had told me). Of course, that made me very popular with my classmates!

I knew I was right! My parents knew everything!

I’m glad my parents were a little on the outskirts because, growing up on the fringe, I now feel less out of place (given my current faith crisis) than I believe I would if my family was “normal.” I have very few mormon friends my age, so I’m not really criticized for my questions, except by my family (or when I go to church). I comfortably fit in my circle of friends.

If you want your kids to stay in the church/never question/be good little TBMs, don’t be progressive.

If you want to be progressive, there’s a good chance they will have bigger problems with the church later on, possibly deciding to leave when they’re on their own.

Or they might be completely comfortable living on the outskirts, knowing they aren’t fully accepted by their peers, knowing they will never really fit in, but being happy with the freedom they have to believe on their own terms.

[macalla]

Is it possible for someone to start out in Stage 5, completely skipping over 1-4? Or for someone to skip any of the stages, go through them in a different order, or arrive at them much earlier than most people?

I have a dear friend whose life perspective, especially when it comes to faith, is an inspiration to me. From our conversations on religion, I suspect he’s in Stage 5. I’m very slowly moving in that direction. In retrospection, I can see where I’ve been in 1-4 throughout my life. My friend is so young, though (but maybe I’m calling the kettle black). He is not religious, but he comes from a non-church-going christian family.

I am going to show him the podcasts and ask him about his experience with stages.

I feel slightly invalidated being so young and experiencing these transitions. As a young adult, I know people my age have whims on the wind. We change our minds. I don’t think that’s me, though, and it’s certainly not my friend.

I’m afraid my elders will chalk it up to “just another teenage phase”. That could be a good thing in some ways, I guess, but it won’t be so funny ten years from now. So I keep quiet.

Anyone else have a similar experience/background?

[macalla]

Trying to strictly live the formula was actually what precipitated my faith crisis. I had always been taught that the closer one adheres to Gospel principles, the happier one will be, and the more blessings will be available. I was restless and dissatisfied, and feeling guilt-ridden on top of that, and thought, “I’ll just read my scriptures an hour every day, pray morning, noon and night, go to the Temple, have FHE, etc.” And I did just that. I’d never been so “good.” It was pretty stressful, trying to handle all of the “requirements” on the checklist at once. 😯

But reading the scriptures (and conference talks and church publications and anything I could get my hands on) didn’t bring me peace, it brought more questions. Of course, most of these questions were unanswerable Praying for answers brought more questions, and some of the answers I did get were so unexpected, not at all what church leaders would teach as correct. I had never looked so closely at our LDS gospel, and the close-up study brought a lot of things to my view that I couldn’t rationalize within the given framework.

Anyway, I found that living by the formula to the exact letter didn’t strengthen my testimony or bring me happiness, but actually brought about the opposite. Turning around and finding a more authentic, sincere way to conduct my life (including accepting the fact that I don’t fit the formula) has brought me general peace and happiness. I realize that the formula does work for many people, and I am happy for them and their happiness!

[macalla]

Thanks for linking those threads; the last one was particularly insightful and a much-needed read for me.

I suddenly had a thought regarding the afterlife I thought I’d share:

In The Last Battle (C.S. Lewis’ Narnia), at the end of everything, the Dwarves are in paradise (an allegory of paradise, maybe, but still). They are seated in a circle talking about how it’s dark, they can’t see anything, the prison rations are terrible, etc. while the other Narnians are enjoying a most precious fruit and running without being weary, etc.

The Narnians try to reason with the Dwarves and show them how wonderful this afterlife is, but the Dwarves refuse to see what’s right there in front of them.

I’m wondering if the afterlife might actually be what we make it. Perhaps our creative power as children/creations of The creator is stronger than we realize. Mental power is mysterious, and we currently only use tiny portions of our brains. We already know that our perceptions create our current reality, and that no two people experiencing the same thing truly have the same experience. Is it possible that the afterlife will be no more (or less) than what we’ve been taught to believe it will be? Or what we choose to believe it will be?

This would explain why near death experiences are so different, and why they generally agree with the religion/religious experiences of the person who dies and comes back. It’s what they consciously or subconsciously expected.

Additionally, this idea sort of correlates with LDS afterlife doctrine. Those who don’t accept the gospel after death aren’t sealed to their families and are “as the angels.” Some Christian denominations believe that they become angels after they die…

I like this idea and I’m glad it popped into my head. It’s a way everyone can be right We don’t know what’s to come in the hereafter (or even if there is a hereafter). We can believe whatever we want about it, so why not believe it’s the best thing we can possibly imagine, and wait to find out?

I know my mother doesn’t ever want to be responsible for billions of heavenly spirits. She wants a little cottage in the countryside where she can be absolutely alone and paint for eternity. This bothered me when I was younger. I thought, “why wouldn’t she want to have her family with her? Why can’t she just have faith that the Celestial Kingdom will be as wonderful as the scriptures say?” Now I understand. Her idea of heaven is not my idea of heaven, and my idea of heaven has changed considerably since my faith crisis. It will probably continue to change (I’m only 19 after all!). I can accept that, and I can allow her to believe in whatever gives her the most peace and comfort, while continuing to explore ideas of what my own experience will be. And hoping she will tolerate my divergence of belief 😯

[macalla]

I don’t think heaven would be heaven without agency. The people there would choose to do right, not be compelled to do so.

[macalla]

Greetings all!

My first post turns out to be on the topic that causes me the most confusion and distress about the church, mostly because it deals with “unanswerables.” Please forgive me for ranting. I’ve got some stuff to get off my chest.

Since we’re on the topic of the afterlife, I’ll throw in my thoughts. If they’re misplaced, feel free to relocate them.

My thoughts on the afterlife all come from questions about temple marriage/family as the LDS church teaches:

1) Why would God set up this system (temple marriage) that only recognizes or approves some marriages but not others?

2) How is temple marriage in itself different from others, aside from the “authority” to seal for eternity? It obviously does not pretend to make a person or a couple more righteous, as D&C 132 says the only qualifier for exaltation beyond the actual sealing authority is not sinning against the Holy Ghost (which is defined as “assenting” unto the death of Christ and shedding innocent blood, after receiving the temple marriage covenant). That’s not hard to do, as I understand it, and it seems to me that most married couples don’t go around murdering innocent people, so I don’t see how that makes temple marriage any better, besides the authority to bind for eternity. Which brings me back to the first question: Why would God do that? Why would He deny the blessings of becoming like Him to His children who were maybe more righteous than the temple married ones, just because they didn’t have that authority? If the only difference is authority, then it seems like favoritism. Am I missing something?

“Let’s make it harder for them to become like us by creating a law that doesn’t do anything except give us a reason to exclude some.”

It’d be like saying to His non-member children, “you have to do this and this and this, and even still, you only get to be ministering angels unless you accept proxy work,” and to His member children, “if you come get my stamp of approval when you get married, and don’t kill each other, you’re off the hook. You don’t have to do anything else.”

Imagine a father saying to his children, “you can only grow up to be like me if you get my permission first.”

3) And here’s my big question: in the afterlife, will we be forcibly separated from our loved ones who had not received temple covenants? If those non-temple marriages were not recognized of God and “not of force” after death, would we be restricted to being ministering angels in a different quadrant of the galaxy to keep us away from our beloved? Or could we use our agency to be with them anyway, in a non-God-authorized sort of bond? What would the consequences of that be?

4) If earth models heaven, why does HF dictate our “continuation of lives” after we die? My parents don’t have much control over how I live my life after I leave home, and they don’t have a final judgment for me, or separate my siblings and me into various degrees of closeness to them. We simply choose how close/how much like my parents we want to be.

5) I personally would prefer a smaller-scale afterlife/exaltation. I’d rather have a few spirit children versus billions and billions. Is that allowed?

I hope the afterlife is more merciful than this concept, and I hope people will not be forced into a heaven they don’t want. That doesn’t make any sense at all to me, and I can’t imagine my God keeps such double-standards. I’m probably jaded in my perspective on most of these. I’ve been dating a wonderful non-mormon boy for the past year, and my family loves him and says they only wish he was mormon. They fear for us because “if we ever have children, we will never be able to see them again after this life.” They will never be ours again. We’ll never see each other again. I’m the one keeping my own family from being whole in the eternities because of my choice to be with him.

I get the same from my ward members, and I feel like they’re using the old fear-of-death/the-unknown trick to manipulate/bribe me into being with a man they can feel comfortable with 🙄 It makes me sad. I’ve been thinking a lot about the afterlife lately because of this, and it’s scary, because I don’t know, and can’t know, without experiencing it. Maybe they are right after all, and I will find out too late. But if it was true, I wouldn’t want it. I don’t believe in the same post-existence my family does, and I can hope for something better. I do wish I could find a way to reconcile my differences with them in a way that they wouldn’t have to fear losing me or the salvation of our family. I think the Greeks had it right with the story of Pandora’s box; hope is the key in this case.

As a side note, have any of you read I Hated Heaven by mormon author Kenny Kemp? I picked it up as an easy read for between classes at the college, but it turned out to be surprisingly ecumenical and lighthearted, for dealing with a subject so emotionally charged as the afterlife.

[Author]

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